musical musings from the frozen north:
torontopia, mont royal city and kawartha kottages

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Michelle McAdorey

Michelle
McAdorey, best known to Canadian music fans as the enigmatic singer of Crash
Vegas (1988-1996), returns after a 12-year absence with a new solo album, the
eighth in her overall discography, called Into Her Future. It reunites her with
old friend and collaborator Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo, who helped her adapt a
cappella lullabies into a full-band, countrified psychedelic pop record that—not
coincidentally—most recalls Crash Vegas’s perfect 1989 debut, Red Earth.

McAdorey
was unlike any other female frontperson back in the day: she wasn’t a quiet
folkie (though she did that very well), she wasn’t a grungy rock chick (though
she could also do that very well), she wasn’t the flighty artsy girl (she would
become that later). She was all of that and much more: she was bold,
mysterious, captivating and just as captivating as peers like Gord Downie, to
whom she should be rightly compared, as opposed to just her female peers.

After
Crash Vegas, guitarist Colin Cripps went on to work with Kathleen Edwards, Jim
Cuddy, and now Blue Rodeo. McAdorey released two albums with avant-garde
guitarist Eric Chenaux, 2000’s Whirl and 2003’s Love Don’t Change. I hear
McAdorey’s influence in everyone from Sarah Harmer to Jennifer Castle; indeed,
Castle wrote to me from a tour stop in Munich to say this about McAdorey: “I can't
remember what made Michelle stand out, but I noticed her all right. Loved her
tattoo and the way she was. Used to listen to Crash Vegas's cover of [Neil
Young’s] ‘Pocahontas.’ [1995 single] ‘On and On' was a true summer jam for
me and my friends, back when we'd take the yellow ghetto blaster in
the boat, paddle to the middle of the lake, strip to naked
and float in the night, teenaged. Then I saw her years later with Eric
Chenaux playing truly weird and beautiful music in Toronto at Ted’s Wrecking Yard and
she stole my heart again.”

Despite my 25 years of fandom, I’d never interviewed McAdorey
before. Needless to say, this was a thrill. Her album release show is tonight,
Wednesday, November 18, at the Monarch Tavern in Toronto.

Michelle McAdorey

November 11, 2015

Let me ask you the most
obvious question: it’s been 12 years since your last record. How old is your
son?

12.

I imagine that’s part of the
reason. Were there others? Life?

Sure.
Yeah, life, in a big way. The last record I made, I was pregnant. It came out
after I had my son. I remember being asked to tour. I maybe stopped [to think]
for a few minutes, but I had this baby. I just said no. I had no idea what that
would mean, how it could change me. It was very good for me to just surrender
completely into mothering.

Did you have any peers at the
time who juggled music and parenthood?

No, I
really didn’t. Other than knowing about Julie Doiron, and always wondering how
[she did it]. Of course, there’s no one way to parent. I knew that it was
important for me in ways I could not have predicted, to be a stay-at-home
mother. I didn’t have a plan, but it was really good for me to do that. So I
did that for a while, and then, yes, other life stuff happened too.

What was your relationship
with music during that time? Creating? Appreciating? Did you turn that off for
a few years?

I did
keep writing. It became about these quiet a cappella songs for a while, using
that nursing time. There was so much that was tiring. I found that opposed to
fighting it, I embraced it. Another experienced mother I respected, said to me,
“It’s just tired, that’s all it is.”
Somehow that was a mini-epiphany! To go with it, rather than thinking, “Oh god.” I always record stuff, if just
in a crude way with a hand-held recorder. I had these melodies. I’d show these a
cappella tunes to the people I made the last record with, Eric Chenaux and Ryan
Driver. It was a slow time, but there was a lot going on personally, too.

The two records you made with
Chenaux are very different than everything else in your discography. After
Crash Vegas ended, it seems to me the material with Chenaux was an unlearning
of sorts, the result of stepping off the hamster wheel of being in a rock band
on a major label and searching for new processes, carte blanche. Melodically,
those two records to me are vastly different than your earlier albums or this
album. Do think that’s fair to say?

I would
say that more about the second record, Love
Don’t Change [2003], maybe not as much about Whirl [2000]. The thread for me is melody informed by folk-rock of
the British Isles, which I’ve always been really obsessed with: droning,
lilting melodies with lots of minors and seconds. I would agree that this
record feels like a continuation [of Crash Vegas]—the fact that I’m working
with Greg again. I don’t know if I analyze it in that way. But I like what you
said about “unlearning” or stepping off. Post-Crash Vegas I was opening myself
up to more improvisation in the songs. It was freeing and interesting doing
that, and I loved the sensibility of those incredible players, great people to
spend time with. It was an antidote to a fatigue I had felt with some of the
music business. And yet, through that time, I also knew that I also loved
playing in a band. With these [new] tunes, one way to realize them would be to
have them played where there are set parts and arrangements, strong choruses
and melodies, and then to try and chase after some of those British Isles
records of the ’70s. Our touchstone would be Fairport Convention, sonically,
and not being afraid of those sprawling arrangements.

A cappella writing naturally
builds strong melodies, no? As opposed to finding four chords you like and kind
of flatlining through it.

You’re
relying on the voice and the melody and even some of the words. I thought of
them as charms, or spells. I was reading this African writer who talked about
whispering ideas into the baby’s ear all the time, like charms. I loved that
idea: “I’m whispering to you who you are and the things to remember.” They
would talk about this long lineage of things that had been whispered over time.

When did you bring Greg in,
when did it begin to gel?

I had
all the songs. I’d say “The Remainder” was the one I involved Greg more in the
writing. That might have been three years ago now, in the winter. He’s someone
I really trust, in so many ways. I’d play him a song and he’d respond really
positively, but he’d say, “Well, let’s just add a chord here,” or, “Pick up the
tempo!” Because a lot of them were quite slow. He helped shape them more for
the band.

Was that the first time you’d
worked with him on that level in more than 25 years?

Yeah!

How was that different? How
has your relationship evolved? You’ve known each other an incredibly long time,
since you were a teenager.

We
really, really have. (laughs) It was really wonderful. We’re really close pals.
It was a bit of a heavy time I was going through, so it was a balm to be able
to go out to his place and play. It was magical. He was very passionate about
what he was hearing. I really heard this as a band, and he introduced me to
most of the people that are playing on the record. That was great, because my
longtime buddy pal Eric Chenaux had moved to Paris, and it’s wonderful to make
new musical friends, to cultivate new relationships. I felt very lucky.

It sounds like it was very
cathartic, too, coming from a place of pain and creating something productive
out of it. It can have a very restorative effect.

It was.
I want to say: it wasn’t just from a place of pain, but there was a lot going
on, and a lot of energy. It was great to have this to pour all that into. And I
was really in love with these songs.

What excited you during those
years away? What did you discover during those years, musically?

Woah,
that’s huge. There’s so much I’ve been listening to. I just got more into those
British Isles folk songs. A lot of those artists I love, they haven’t always
authored the tunes they’re playing. They play these really old songs.
Sonically, I love the sound and all the players. But it didn’t seem to be about
persona or images, as much as: “Here’s this ancient tune. How does it go? OK,
let’s just get on this thing.” That’s all you have to do: get on it and you do
it and it does it.

Have you ever sung those
songs?

Just to
myself. Some of them I knew of during Crash Vegas, but more after. I don’t know
if you know Steeleye Span, or Nic Jones. Martin Arnold is a [Toronto] composer,
so brilliant, and he has one of the most extensive record collections ever.
He’s responsible for expanding my exposure to more and more music—and his own
music. He takes old folk tunes and places them in an experimental context. He
treats them in a way that to me is so beautiful, without being too cerebral. It
feels visceral. Then another friend was making me mixed CDs. There was a lot of
what I’d call pop: songs with structure and strong melodies. There were many
songs I knew, but many I didn’t, spanning all eras. Whether it was listening to
a demo of Stevie Nicks singing “Dreams,” which is one of the most incredible
things I’ve ever heard. Or these Lenny Breau songs, where he sings: "FiveO’Clock Bells" and "New York City." Music from Beirut. A lot of psychedelic pop
stuff. All over the place. It’s all seeping in there. It’s fantastic to have
those friends. I still love listening to a record from beginning to end, but I
really appreciate those mixes. Lately, I like the Steve Gunn record. And my
good pal Jennifer Castle, and Ryan Driver.

You grew up in Toronto?

For
parts of it. I went away to boarding school a couple of times and had
adventures there. Eventually I moved to London as a teenager.

What do you remember seeing
here?

My
parents were quasi-hippies. I went to the Riverboat when I was really, really
young. I saw Kris Kristofferson. He sang to me. I think I was 7. He wanted to
talk to me after and give me a kiss, it was a scratchy, alcoholic kiss, but I
was still smitten with him and he wrote me this beautiful autograph. I’d go to
lots of festivals with my parents.

Were you a Mariposa kid?

A little
bit. But do you know the band Perth County Conspiracy? (laughs) There were,
like, mushroom circles, mushroom tea. At the Bathurst Street United Church
there would be [events there], and I remember being a kid and trying to find
places to hang out while your parents were into this weird performance art or
whatever. Then I’d sneak into bars when new wave and punk was happening. Lots
of great shows at the Palais Royale: Selecter, Specials, Gang of Four. Then
going to Maple Leaf Gardens, where I saw Bob Marley a few times. A friend had
an older brother who had a great record collection, and he—I don’t know why—but
he’d take us to these fantastic shows at the Gardens. I saw Springsteen there,
in the concert bowl. Queen, with Thin Lizzy. Things that would blow my mind.

Did you go to Britain to be a
musician?

Maybe. I
lied about my age to go to theatre school there. And so much of the music I was
obsessed with came from there. There were music paper ads asking for singers.

Is that how you found Kirsty
MacColl?

No, that
was happenstance. I took a trip to Spain. I might have been in the U.K. six
months, and a friend said, “Hey, you should go to Ibiza. A friend has a
recording studio there.” “OK, sure.” So I went, and the Yellow Magic Orchestra
are there, these Japanese guys who came up to me, very formal, and would say,
“Secret meeting?” And I’d think, “What? Does that mean what I think it means?
I’m going to go back upstairs and have some marmalade and bread.” But it was on
the plane trip back where I was held over in Valencia, and Kristy MacColl and
her pal get on the plane and start drinking. We start talking and singing and
just formed a friendship. She said, “You should be my background vocalist!”

Did she have much going on
then, or was she just beginning? That was 1981?

She was
more or less just beginning. She might have had one record out before. But this
was the record…

That’s
right! It was just all silly. We were always pretending to be in Streetcar Named Desire and fooling
around with Southern accents. Her thing
was cool, she loved to layer all these harmonies on top of another. And I’d never
been in a recording studio before. It was fantastic to be there with her. I had
no idea who her father was [Ewan MacColl, most famous for “Dirty Old Town” and
“The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face”].

Then your band Corect
Spelling, a.k.a. Cold Fish…

Yes,
that was hilarious. (laughs) I had met a guy named Speedy Keen. He really
looked out for me and was encouraging me to write. He was my first songwriting
coach. I had this band, Cold Fish, and he loved it. His band was Thunderclap
Newman and he wrote a song called “Something in the Air.” (sings it) This was
his huge hit. He was such a character. He’d also produced Motorhead. He was a
good pal of Lemmy’s. He knew Pete Townshend. He had these stories you’d tell,
and you’d occasionally meet some of these people. He was a big drinker and
really into gambling. He was broke. He spent all his money. He was one of the
most kind-hearted, generous, sweet people. Very funny. He took this band, Cold
Fish, into a really fancy studio owned by his friend. We did these demos that I
wish I had. I was really into the B-52’s at the time. One song was called
“American Salad.” We had this glass bowl and thought we’d just smash it against
the wall and record it—because the lyrics was, “I’ve got American salad on the wall!” (laughs)

Please tell me you have that
demo.

I don’t
think so. I do wonder about that. I purged a bunch of cassettes a while back,
which I regret now. So after that demo, interest started to develop in the
band. Speedy would say, [adopts accent of old, crusty British man] “Watch out
for the sharks! They will destroy you!” But for us, these fancy people were
coming around and we were taken in a bit.

Was everybody else in the
band as young as you were?

No. They
were a little bit older.

So it wasn’t a teenage band.

I was
the only teenager. Eventually Midge Ure, who I met through someone else, this
manager Falcon Stuart, who had been managing X-Ray Spex and Adam Ant. He was
kind of a creep. He wasn’t so ethical. It was a weird thing. We went into the
studio. I remember getting the finished product and thinking, what is this? It
sounds like Ultravox. I think it’s my voice, but maybe it’s Midge’s voice. It
was such a weird time.

Did you come back right away?

I stayed
there for a while. It’s a hard place to survive. Also, the drummer of that band
was my boyfriend and then he became the drummer of the Clash, after Topper
Headon.

The Cut the Crap era?

Yeah, he
did that record and toured with them just before that. He at least got to play
with Mick Jones for a while. Pete Howard was his name. The rest of us were
Clash fanatics. It was bizarre. It changed things quite a bit. We were a couple
and I went on the road a bit and did that, but we parted. I started recording
with other people and made some interesting recordings that I liked. More
experimental, odd. I became more disillusioned at the hardness of trying to
exist, just working all the time trying to figure out how to live. I’d still
talk to Greg now and again. We’d known each other since I’d sneak into bars and
see the Viletones and the Bopcats and the Hi-Fis.

The Sharks.

Exactly!
I thought those bands were incredible.

Somebody told me, maybe Margo
Timmins, that the Sharks’ Sherry Kean was so incredible, that they’d never seen
a woman on the Toronto scene front a band like that before. It was a very dude
scene.

Yeah,
she was strong. There weren’t many role models, really. Blondie, Chrissie
Hynde, Slits, B-52s. There were others, too, but not in that edgy, tough way.
And Sherry Kean had that.

What made you want to come
home?

The
Brits have this cynicism, it’s critical thinking but it can sort of degrade
into a cynicism and get stuck there, it’s just anti-everything. I think I just
wanted some more sunshine. I wanted things to be easier. And Greg was saying
that he’d felt a similar thing in New York. Suddenly he found himself in
Toronto [in 1985] and he said, “It’s great, Toronto is like nowhere. You have
this space you can afford, and only work three or four days.” I felt like
London was the centre of the universe, and I wasn’t sure how I would find my
form of expression here, my aesthetic.

When I think of Toronto at
that time, I think of you and Mary Margaret O’Hara and Margo Timmins and Jane Siberry
and all these strong women who didn’t really fit traditional archetypes. Then
the scene got a bit more dude-ish in the ’90s, but for a time there so many of
my favourite Toronto artists were women. Sherry Kean’s children, if you will.

I feel like Crash Vegas stood
out during that time, that you didn’t fit any archetype: your voice, your stage
presence, and I really got the sense that Crash Vegas was a band, not just a
singer with backing musicians. Did it feel at all like you were square pegs in
a round hole?

I don’t
know if I was self-conscious about it. I was definitely questioning what it was
to be a woman, what that meant. Do you have to shave your armpits? Wear makeup?
A lot of the women I thought were really cool didn’t do that. I thought you
could still be beautiful and sexy and powerful without conforming to that. I
was thinking too of Martha and the Muffins, they were great. A lot of women I
liked were androgynous and played with their image in a way that was not so
cliché. It bugged me that we’d go to do some TV thing and they’d immediately
descend on me to put on all this makeup, while the guys are just sitting over
there. I hated makeup, too. It made me feel kind of allergic, like I was going
to start breaking out or get itchy. For me, music was always about not being
self-conscious. That was probably one of the harder parts of being in a band
that gets attention: suddenly people are looking at you or you have to get your
picture taken. As much as I dig parts of that, I’d feel uncomfortable, too,
because of the way women get dissected—and because I was dissecting myself,
too, and noticing that and trying not to fall prey of that kind of evaluating.
Ultimately, it’s just about trying to lose yourself. I mean, Patti Smith would
take a piss on stage!I didn’t
necessarily want to do that, but I liked that she was doing that. When the
parameters are so wide, I’d rather veer more toward that than wearing heels and
foundation.

You had proximity to Blue
Rodeo as they blew up, and you toured with the Tragically Hip at the absolute
height, in 1993, when their fans were so rabid and reverent in ways I still
don’t think I’ve seen with any other act since. What did you observe or learn
being that close to that level of stardom?

First of
all, it was so much fun. As a band, we were really lucky that some fantastic
bands dug what we were doing—and liked our company (laughs). That’s one of the
things about being on the road; you want to be with people you like. Gord
[Downie] would always stand out; that band was a machine, very reliable, and
they provided a platform for Gord to do this kind of shamanic spell work.
People needed a way to express and move the spirit, and there is Gord almost
giving you permission. He’s doing this thing, or talking in tongues, or
freaking out, so I guess we have permission to freak out. That’s one of the
best things about music, is that it can transport you. It would definitely
confirm that we could keep doing what we were doing. Being in the moment in the
live experience—you are going to play the same songs, but where can you take
it? We would have improvisation, sections would become extended, we wouldn’t
know how long or when. It’s one of the most exciting things to listen to or be
a part of. Suddenly there is no age, no time. It just breaks down a lot of
structures.

That was around 1993. Was
Crash Vegas almost done when Sony asked you do “Pocahontas” and then make
another record?

We
parted with our record company, and then Sony suddenly wanted us to do this
song, and then they liked our versions and wanted to offer us a record deal. So
we thought, “Uh, okay, let’s try this one.” It was like a factory, recording in
their building. But at least you’re cloistered; nobody really came in. And the
engineer there was fantastic, Lenny DeRose. So great to work with.

The band split a year later,
after Aurora?

When did
that come out? 96? Maybe, I don’t remember.

What did you think you wanted
to do right after? Did you feel like the rug was pulled out or were you ready
for something totally fresh?

I just
wanted to kind of stop. Meanwhile, Gavin Brown and Eric Chenaux were in the
live Crash Vegas, and Eric and I were already starting to try some stuff. I was
a big fan of Lifelike Weeds; I didn’t know Phleg Camp as much. Lifelike Weeds
were just incredible. I felt there was a box I was in, and wasn’t sure how to
reinvent myself in it. It was a good time to just stop. I remember being told
by a manager, “Okay, we should get you a deal now for your solo album.” I
remember taking a moment and thinking, “Oh, is that the good business choice?”
I knew I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t even sure that was the model anymore.

But you knew you weren’t
suddenly going to take a day job?

Oh yeah,
maybe naively. I should have prepared more! I was really getting into yoga—not
like yoga now, though!

You prefer yoga’s earlier
work.

Definitely!
Also, I was living in a warehouse, an interesting community of people. Art was
looming for me. I wanted that to be more a part of what I was doing, whereas I
felt like the emphasis on the biz part of music, I didn’t have the balance
right in my mind. I wanted to step back and feel the excitement of something.
It was important to do that. I had a friend who was riding freight trains. It
was like, what? I didn’t know people were still doing that! I had a lot of
things I wanted to do.

The lyrics here are very much
about a life of experience. It’s not a young person’s record, per se. Do you
think there’s a thematic thread?

I think
so. Nothing I planned. That’s what’s interesting about songs: what they reveal,
and what you don’t necessarily want to tell people. I feel: what life is there
left to live? What is life now? The idea of optimistic melancholy, how to still
conjure or call forth the life. And of course, love. Love not really being
romantic love, but the thing that really animates us, or is so intrinsic to the
connection of life experiences—to reach for that. But it’s a paradox because
you can’t reach for it and grab it: you have to let go. Again, coming back to
the idea of incantations: maybe if I send out these little messages, I can call
forth life. How to thrive: that’s also been a question I have as a parent, and
as a musician. Can I thrive as a musician? I don’t know if I really can.
Thriving and doing something we love is an important thing we have to show our
kids.

As a parent, one learns early
on that you don’t want your own poisons or toxicity to pass on to your children,
to be witnessed by your children.

Yeah.
You don’t want to drag your child down the rabbit hole with you, but at the
same time I realize that I’m going to make mistakes. I’m going to screw up, and
it’s okay to show them that, and how you make your way out of that. My boy is
good at helping me to be better than I could have been, [helping me at] owning
my own shit, or knowing that I need to choose different things sometimes. It’s
definitely different than when I was a single person responsible only for myself.

I hear a lot more optimism
from you in this record than I have in the past. I was listening to everything
in the past week. On the first record you sing about “If I could bury her with
my two hands.” On the second record, “With today’s amazing murder.” Or “My
mother died of childbirth because her husband had a gun.” There’s a lot of
darkness on those records. I don’t see those clouds here.

I think
you’re right. I think we can’t control many things—most things—but perhaps we
can choose some things. Given the choice between feeling really gloomy or
trying not to, we can choose to love. Through becoming a mother, that’s where
I’ve learned so much about love, in so many ways, and what I’m reflecting. The
importance of that. The responsibility of that. The echo. Another thing in the
record is about freedom. What is that? It’s not the same for each person.
There’s something very rebellious in me. I’m trying to have a peace with that.